Thursday, February 13, 2014

#Reasonator - a bit selective, not random

#Wikidata will show you the labels for the languages that you specify in the Babel information on your user page. This is really useful. Reasonator supports your Babel information by allowing you to import it into your personal settings. This will be the order for fall back languages when looking at labels.

New is that this information may influence the "Random item" functionality. The randomiser will shows all items, or only items with or items without a label in your languages.

These three options all have their own use cases.

When you want to learn about the content Wikidata holds, all items is best. It will make it obvious that there is much that you hardly understand.

When you look for items with a label in one of the languages you know, you are provided with a great opportunity to add statements in Wikidata. Many potential statements are obvious from reading the text that shows when you hover over a Wikipedia link.

When you go for the option of no labels in any of your languages, you have the opportunity to add labels when you can make out what these articles are about.